Check out my new website!

The website for my book, THE ME GENERATION... BY ME has been revised and really spiffed up!   There's now a sample chapter and a whole photo gallery with never-before-seen pictures of the era, lost drawings of mine, and other goodies.  You can enlarge 'em.  You can do a slide show.   There are even captions!  Also, some videos of the Sunset Strip riots and other '60s fun times.  Prepare to spend hours, or at least ten minutes immersed in my life.

My thanks to Great Big Radio Guy for putting it all together.

Come visit.  Here's where you go.   

Preview: Who's this person in the middle?  No it's not any of my former girlfriends... although, good guess.  The photo gallery explains.

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Writing problem: what to do if you get stuck

This happens often as you write your script or novel. You come to a point where you think you’ve written yourself into a corner. A plot point requires something and you just can’t get there. Wait a minute, he can’t swim to safety; he’s in a wheelchair. Exactly how is she going to get to the Pope to sell him Girl Scout cookies?

This is one of the benefits of a being in a partnership – sometimes he can solve it.

But when working alone, here are four handy tips:

First, don’t be afraid to go back. Yes, you spent an hour on the last page and there’s a great joke about renal failure but if it drops you off at a dead end replace it with something that works. Once you have it you’ll probably be able to make up for lost time and more.

So now that you’ve freed yourself, let your mind wander. Come at the problem from different angles. What if he doesn’t get drunk? What if she gets drunk instead? What if he kills the cable repairman tomorrow and not today (right away that makes more sense because the cable repairman is always a day late)? Way too often we get stuck thinking there’s only one way to solve a problem. There’s not. On LOST once there was some crisis and the solution was to “move the island”. Now that’s not the first thing you normally think of. Look for other options. They’re out there.

Second, go past it if you can. If it’s a joke you just can’t find, stick a pin in it and move on. Do the heavy lifting first and then come. It’s a lot easier to tackle the problem when you know it’s the final thing you need to do. But I say “if you can” because if the issue is a major plot point or character definition it’s usually better to solve it now. You don’t want to have to go back and rewrite six pages before the problem and then sixty pages after the problem once you’ve solved it. Or that could just be me. However, long speeches, specific jokes, finding the perfect paragraph to describe a setting – save that crap for later.

Third. Don’t panic. You’ll get it. It might not be in five minutes but you will. My partner and I always joke when we come to a bump that “that’s it. A thirty year career comes to end because we can’t figure how to get Daphne out of the room.” Yes, it’s frustrating but you’re a writer. You welcome pain.

And finally, just walk away. Take a break. Do anything else but write. For some this is hard. They don’t like to stop until they’ve finished a scene or a certain number of pages or ZACK & CODY comes on. But it’s okay to stop in the middle of a scene, the middle of a speech, the middle of a word. Clear your head. Go for a walk. Go see a movie. Go to bed. Let your subconscious mull over the dilemma. It will, trust me. Many times I’ll go to sleep with a pad and pen by my bed. In the morning the solution is somehow there. I also do a lot of problem solving in the shower. It’s hard to read back later because the pad is wet, but letting your mind drift while you’re in a relaxed state often unlocks the lock.

Let me show you an example. I don’t really know how to end this post. So for now I’m ju

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"Life Without Dick" and other LIFETIME movies

I found a website that lists all of the movies shown on LIFETIME. I imagine most of these are Movies of the Week made specifically for LIFETIME. You’ll notice several recurring themes. These are actual titles; I’m not making any of them up. I gotta watch LIFETIME MORE.

Life Without Dick

A Woman Hunted

Bastard Out of Carolina

Co-ed Call Girl

Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life

Dead at 17

Death of a Cheerleader (which just might be the remake of Dead at 17)

Honeymoon With Mom

Human Trafficking

I Do (but I Don’t)

I Me Wed

I’m With Lucy

Little Girls in Pretty Boxes

Miracle on the 17th Green

My Stepson, My Lover

Nora Roberts Old

Robin Cook’s Terminal

Secret Lives of Second Wives

Single White Female 2: The Psycho (as opposed to the well adjusted girl in Single White Female 1)

The Trophy Wife’s Secret

To Be Fat Like Me

Too Young to Be a Dad

7 Things to Do Before 30

Ambulance Girl (this might be a superhero movie, not sure)

Confessions of a Go-Go Girl

Hostile Makeover

Jack & Jill vs. The World

Love ‘Em, Love “Em Not Weekend

Mafia Doctor

Mom, Dad, and Her

More Sex & the Single Mom

Mother, May I Sleep With Danger

Our Son, the Matchmaker

Sex & Mrs. X

The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer

The Wives he Forgot

Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her

What if God Were the Sun?

Why I Wore Lipstick to my Mastechtomy

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Standing up to the star

Egads! It’s Friday the 13th. But answering a question of yours is considered good luck, so here are a few.

John starts with a question that harkens back to a previous post about how actors should give writers notes.

Any corresponding anecdotes about actors/actresses who protested loudly/petulantly about a scene, didn't get their way and then had to watch the 'horrible' scene score a bull's eye with the audience?

Well, I have a variation of that. This was back in the late ‘70s on THE TONY RANDALL SHOW. There was one scene that Tony hated. It was between him and luscious young guest star Annette O’Toole (pictured: above). He tanked it in rehearsal. We all went back to the room and didn’t know how to change it. It should've worked. So we left it in. Next day, same thing. He buried the scene in rehearsal. One of the showrunners, Tom Patchett took him aside – and I’ve never seen this before or since – he told Tony they weren’t going to change the scene. Tom said it even worked when the casting director was reading the scene during auditions. Tom reiterated that the staff really believes in the scene and knows that if Tony wanted to commit he could hit it out of the park. But if he wanted to keep playing it the way he had been he could just die with it in front of the audience. Tony’s choice.

Tom then walked away. I was in awe. What cajones!

Tony did commit to the scene, it went through the roof, and afterwards Tony came up to us and said Annette O’Toole was really sensational and we should bring her back.

All these years later I still tip my cap to Tom Patchett. Wow.


Matt asks:

Some actors have some experience writing or at least writing jokes, such as Ray Romano as a stand up comic. Are you more likely to take notes from somebody with this experience?

I have one simple rule: the best idea wins. Whether it’s from Ray Romano or the craft-services guy.

In the case of Ray, he was very involved in the creative process, even coming back to the room during rewrites. And I must say, having sat in on a few of them myself, he never played the “star” card. He was just one of the writers around the table. And yes, most of his suggestions were excellent ones.

Tim Simmons queries:

I love the deleted scenes from the office on their website. They are usually real quick jokes. Do writers add short, non-story related jokes to pad (or if running long delete) to fit time?

Sometimes. In the first year of CHEERS David and I wrote a bar run about what was the smartest barnyard animal? I think that was the bit. We wrote quite a few. Anyway, it was filmed, but then the show ran long so it was cut. A few weeks we put it back in another episode. Same thing. The actors rehearsed it, memorized it, performed it on camera and it wound up on the cutting room floor.

This went on about four times until the bit finally aired. By that fourth time the actors understandably were ready to storm the writers room.

Now you may ask, if you filmed it once, why not just use that? Because the wardrobe and background wouldn’t match. If this were MASH we would have been able to do that.

And finally, from DwWashburn:

In the pre VCR/DVR days of television it was not uncommon for a semi recurring character to be played by more than one actor. For example, Rob Petrie's father was played by at least two actors. Nowadays it seems like if a character is going to reappear, even if just for one or two episodes a season, the production company retains the same actor.

My question is does the actor (or their agent) call up the program and say "I'm available from insert first day to insert last day and then the writers get to work on a script featuring the semi-regular?

Or is a script written first, and then an effort made to find the actor and check his schedule?

Usually the producers will call the actor’s agent and check on availability first. If the actor’s free they’ll write the script, or they’ll adjust their schedule to accommodate the actor.

But not always. Remember the Bar Wars episodes of CHEERS? We used Joe Polis (pictured: left), but then he wasn’t available when we wanted to bring him back so they re-cast the part with Robert Desiderio. Over the next few Bar Wars episodes they kind of traded off depending on who was free. Too bad Annette O’Toole wasn’t available.

What's your question?  Leave it in the comments section and stay away from black cats.    Thanks. 

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Radio Daze

Here’s another tale from my colorful yet brief radio career. There may be a book in these stories (assuming I sell more of my current one. Why haven’t you ordered yours yet? Do I have to become Dr. Gene Scott and just stare at you people for an hour?)

Anyway...

Among the many things missing in radio today are pranks. Back when there were live local broadcasters and actual competition between stations (one company didn’t own them all), a by-product was one-ups-manship. I was involved in one stunt during my first job.

I was a sports intern at KMPC in Los Angeles. They were the big full-service station in town. Their disc jockeys were national celebrities like Gary Owens, Wink Martindale, and Jim Lange. They carried the Rams, Angels, and UCLA Bruins. And they had helicopters and mobile units. I think their local news department was larger than CNN’s is now.  The studios were essentially in the White House.

It was the summer of 1970. I worked Monday through Friday from 6 AM – 3 PM. (Yes, the hours were long but they were paying me minimum wage.) I wrote sports reports, made coffee, and emptied ashtrays.

Meanwhile, their competitor was KGIL in the San Fernando Valley. Their signal was nothing compared to KMPC’s. If they had a helicopter it was made by Hasbro. Their "skywatch" was probably a guy on a mountain top with binoculars.  But their morning man was brilliant. Sweet Dick Whittington was (and is) one of the funniest, most inventive radio personalities I have ever heard. I was a huge fan. We had met on a couple of occasions. Okay, so that’s the backstory.

Sweet Dick

I’m at my desk. It’s about 7:45 in the morning and my phone rings. It’s some goofball who says he’s the singing newsman from some station in Denver and wonders if there are any openings at KMPC. I tell him I didn’t think so. He asks if he could audition for me. This sounds strange to me but I say okay. Who doesn't like to be serenaded about a bus plunge?  He begins singing some news story. I figure it out. It’s Whittington using a phony voice. I assume he's on the air live. I let him finish, tell him he’s great. Then I say, “Y’know, I’m frustrated that I’m not on the air. I have a pretty good singing voice. Could I audition for you?” He’s a little thrown but says okay. I then sing the KMPC jingle. There’s a pause and he says, “You’re a rotten kid!” and hangs up.

I was right.  This bit went out on the air live, my singing KMPC’s jingle included.

So I go the rest of the morning feeling pretty good about myself. Word gets around the station and a few salesmen and other employees stop in the newsroom to congratulate me.

At around noon, Stan Spero, the General Manager comes in. He asks if I was the one who pulled that stunt on KGIL? Yes, I say proudly. He tells me there’s someone who wants to speak to me. Now Stan Warwick, the General Manager of KGIL enters the room. What the fuck is he doing there? Warwick is clearly pissed. He begins grilling me. “Did I think it was funny to embarrass his station?” “Is this how I conduct myself as a professional?” Needless to say, I’m sweating buckets. I look to my GM for support. He’s just glaring at me. Fun is fun but apparently I had crossed a line.

Just at the point I was ready to hang myself with a teletype ribbon they both break up laughing. I had been punked. Orchestrated of course, by Dick Whittington. The two general managers were friends and had planned on getting together for lunch that day anyway. Both appreciated a good radio prank and appreciated even more getting back at the prankster.

Dick Whittington is one of my favorite people in the world. But I hope he’s sleeping with one eye open. Because it’s my turn.

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Everything you ever needed to know about comedy

Dan O'Shannon is one of the executive producers of MODERN FAMILY.  He was a showrunner of FRASIER and an executive producer of CHEERS.  The man knows funny.  Recently he wrote a terrific book called WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?  A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE TO THE COMEDIC EVENT.   Somehow he managed to explain comedy, which to me is harder than trying to describe the color red over the radio.   As insane as it is to plug someone else's book when I'm still shamelessly hawking mine (available here -- go buy it), I really recommend Dan's book (which you can order here).  Recently, I had the chance to talk to him about it. 

What possessed you to write this book?

Like many who actually create comedy, I occasionally see books and articles that academics write about humor. And like many who create it, I find most of it tone deaf. It's like reading about bicycle riding from someone who's never been on a bike. One day I asked myself how I would define and analyze comedy, if I was so smart?

It seems like such an enormous undertaking. Explaining the world might've been easier. How did you go about organizing this bad boy?

A lot of people start right in analyzing joke structures. I chose to analyze the comedic event, which includes the study of context, as well as structure, content, and transmission. And I relentlessly asked myself questions: What changes in social context or delivery might enhance or inhibit the laugh? How does being part of an audience make you laugh differently than when you're alone? How does being in the presence of the source of the comedy enhance or inhibit response? How can a joke be funnier through repetition and then stop being funny and then start being funny? Why do things cease to be funny? Four years of stand-up followed by twenty-seven years in sitcoms provided me with thousands and thousands of hours of experimentation.

Has writing this book affected the way you now write comedy? Are you consciously analyzing every joke you write?

I never analyze while I'm writing. It's like I use a different part of my brain or something. But seem to record the process mentally, because I can go back and trace my steps.

Doesn't analyzing take the fun out of comedy?

I spent a solid eight years writing this book, exploring the dozens of variables that can come into play when we laugh at even the simplest things. In the end, I found myself in awe of comedy's flexibility and scope. I still enjoy it, but now I appreciate it more than I did. That's why I get annoyed when I see academes trying to nail it down to a simple "All comedy is X" statement.

Can this book teach you how to be funny?

I truly don't know. But I do claim that it will make the reader hear laughter -- even his own -- differently. You'll have a reasonable chance of understanding the probable variables that provoked the laughter.

How is this book valuable to young writers trying to break into sitcom writing?

If they buy it, I will be more likely to send their scripts to agents. I'm kidding. I guess the same could be asked of music theory. It can illuminate, but it can't turn someone who's got a tin ear into a singer. Also, I don't tend to position the book as a "how to". It's more like a "what I think happens."

There are times I'm in a movie theater and people are laughing and for the life of me I don't know why. You went on a search to discover why. I just think, "what am I doing in this business?" Were there some laughs that took you years to explain?

Since I was a boy, I was always trying to understand the laugh. One laugh took me years to figure out. When I was a teenager, I saw the MARY TYLER MOORE episode, "Lou Dates Mary", in which Lou and Mary go on an awkward date, culminating in an attempted kiss on her couch. The characters realize the folly of what they're doing and start laughing at how wrong it all is. The studio audience shrieks with laughter, but then there's kind of a sharp taper to the laugh. It seemed slightly unsatisfying.

I forgot about it until years later when I put a joke in a CHEERS for Norm. He starts to announce that he's going to get off his ass and get a job and tell his wife he loves her and stop drinking beer -- but he's kidding and can't say the whole thing without laughing. When we did it for the audience, I heard a familiar laugh: loud at first, sudden taper. And I looked at the studio audience and I had my answer to the Mary Tyler Moore laugh.

The answer is that in each case, the studio audience thinks they are witnessing a blooper. Actors often crack up when they make a mistake. So the audience laughs. But then, the scene keeps going. The audience realizes their mistake and has to jump back into the scene's reality. That's the taper. It's a mistake we would not make watching at home, because we are having a different experience. This is why we study the whole experience and not just the material.

How about the theories of comedy. Comedy is pain. Comedy is pain plus time. Comedy is frustration. Comedy is anything other than an Adam Sandler movie. Is there a theory?

There are several competing theories, like incongruity theory (which is different than incongruity resolution theory, which is a crock), aggression, relief, superiority, etc. Many of them are often championed as the essence comedy, as in "all comedy is superiority". My approach was to step back and create a model, one that would show how these ideas can come into play in any given comedic event. While there are several new theories throughout the book, I tend to think that what I'm really presenting overall is a more comprehensive and flexible model.

Thanks, Dan.  Once again, the book is WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?  You can get your copy here.  

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Fun with flops

Readers have asked why I continue to bring up AfterMASH and my involvement in it? Well, number one – it was a legendary failure. In only a year we went from a 48 share to a 19. Had we stayed on the air longer we might’ve broken single digits. How many people can say they were part of history?  That PEOPLE magazine cover had to be from when we premiered.  And what says comedy more than an I.V. drip?

Number two – it keeps me humble. Everyone who has been in the business for any length of time has an AfterMASH or two (or six). Ever see 1941? Or LIFE WITH LUCY?

Number three is that a flop is good fodder for humor. The truth is I had a decent time on that show. Got to work and learn from the great Larry Gelbart. And the hours allowed me to be home every night to give my newborn son a bath. And the final product wasn’t end of the world bad, just global crisis bad.

But I’ll let you in on a little secret. I stole the bit.

Using a past flop as a running gag was not an original idea of mine. I lifted it from Jack Benny.

Who’s Jack Benny many of you are saying? He was a comedian who had his own radio and television show for four or five decades in the first part of the last century. In his day he was as well-known and popular as Robin Williams, David Letterman, and Louis CK put together.

Benny was the master of running gags. He was (or should I say his character was?) notoriously cheap. The famous line (written by Milt Josephsberg): Benny is held up at gunpoint. The robber says, “Your money or your life.” There’s a long long pause. The robber says, “Well?” and Benny says, “I’m thinking!”  His character supposedly drove an old beat up Maxwell car, kept his money in an underground vault guarded by alligators, and saw himself as a virtuoso violinist although he was terrible (again, in real life he was quite good).

He was once in a movie called THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT. It did not do well at the boxoffice. And for years Benny or someone in his cast would bring up THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT and what a flop it was. This always produced big laughs. To say I “stole” the bit is not completely accurate. I didn’t use any of the specific jokes, I just adopted the form.

But my point is this: I consider myself a student of comedy. Most, if not all of the comedy we see today is merely a variation on what has come before. The trick is to make yourself aware of it. Do your homework. How?

You want to be a stand-up comedian? Get albums or watch YouTube videos of Woody Allen, Bob Newhart, Shelley Berman, Danny Thomas, Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx, Elayne Boosler, and many more. Yes, there were funny people before Chris Rock.

Want to be a comic playwright? Read Neil Simon. Read Kaufman & Hart. Read Herb Gardner. Read Alan Ayckbourn. Read Paul Rudnick. Read Woody Allen. Read Hecht & MacArthur. Read Larry Gelbart. 

For comic timing in movies study the silents. Laurel & Hardy, Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd.

There are some dazzling comic screenplay writers from the distant past. Preston Sturgess, Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond, Morrie Ryskind, and Joseph Mankiewicz to name but a few.  Judd Apatow did not invent comedy. 

You get the idea. These people have much to teach you. And as a bonus, they’ll also throw in a ton of belly laughs along the way.

Tomorrow I talk more about the study of comedy. Dan O’Shannon, one of the Executive Producers of MODERN FAMILY and formerly with CHEERS and FRASIER just wrote a book called WHAT ARE YOU LAUGHING AT? It’s the most complete analysis of comedy ever written (certainly ever attempted). Tomorrow I’ll interview him.

There's no need to re-invent the wheel.  These conventions are out there and yours for the updating.  Go find them.   Or read about them.  See you tomorrow.

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